Jennifer Beard

Associate Professor Jennifer Beard is a scholar at Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne, specializing in philosophically oriented historical research within the field of law. She holds a BA (Hons) and LLB (Hons) from the Australian National University, an LLM from the London School of Economics, and a PhD from the University of Melbourne. Her research focuses on the public aspects of charity law over time, links between English charity law and political authority, political advocacy of charities, the relationship between law and charity, and the role of the not-for-profit sector in law and development. Additional interests include the relationship between public and private power, law and society, law, imperialism, and development, theories of the State, political authority, and the role of law in political power. She supervises doctoral candidates in public law, international law and development, and charity law, and teaches Administrative Law in the Melbourne JD program.

Beard's most cited work is the monograph The Political Economy of Desire: International Law, Development and the Nation State (Routledge-Cavendish, 2007), with her oeuvre garnering over 337 citations on Google Scholar. Recent contributions include chapters on the significance of Christian charity to international law and international law and development, as well as publications such as 'Charity Law from a Public Law Perspective: The Aid/Watch Case Revisited', 'Parrhēsia and Credibility: The Sovereign of Refugee Status Determination', and 'On Public Reason, Public Benefit and Political Charities'. Her career includes visiting fellowships at the University of Victoria Faculty of Law in Canada, University of Otago Law Faculty, University of British Columbia Allard School of Law, United Nations University for Peace Department of International Law and Human Rights in Costa Rica, and Lund University Law School. Between 2009 and 2014, she served as a member of the Migration Review Tribunal and Refugee Review Tribunal, alongside roles on the Commonwealth Administrative Review Tribunal and Victorian Firearms Appeals Committee. Currently, she is Director of Graduate Research at Melbourne Law School and a member of the Committee of Graduate Research Associate Deans at the University of Melbourne, as well as the Board of Examiners for Administrative Law.

Professional Email: jennifer.beard@unimelb.edu.au